1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to lock release assemblies that are accessible at the rear of a fold-down back of a collapsible home or office chair. Manually manipulating the lock release assemblies allows the fold-down back of the chair to be rotated from a locked upright position standing vertically above the seat of the chair during use to an unlocked folded position lying horizontally over the seat to facilitate a compact, space-efficient configuration suitable for storage or transport.
2. Background Art
Occasionally, it is necessary to transport or store one or more chairs of the kind having a seat, a back standing vertically above the seat to support the user's back thereagainst, and a pair of arms located adjacent opposite sides of the seat. In those cases where a large number of chairs are to be shipped or stored, a correspondingly large amount of space will typically be required which increases both the shipping/storage costs and inefficiency. For example, where the chairs are to be shipped by boat and/or by truck, the cargo space available may be quickly consumed by a relatively few chairs. To overcome this problem, it is known to disassemble the chairs prior to shipment. However, such disassembly also mandates an additional assembly once the chairs reach their final destination. Consequently, time is wasted during both assembly and disassembly which contributes to the overall shipping costs that are ultimately passed through to the purchaser. Moreover, parts of the chair can become lost following disassembly which may prevent reassembly and, therefore, result in the chair being ultimately scrapped. In certain situations, assembly of the chair is left to the purchaser. In this case, some special skill and/or tools are often required before the chair is ready to use. If the purchaser is unable to easily complete the assembly in a reasonable time, frustration may occur which can result in the chair going unused or returned to the vendor.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to have a collapsible chair having a rotatable fold-down back where the chair is capable of being quickly and easily disposed in a compact, space-efficient configuration suitable for storage and/or transport without having to first disassemble the chair and then reassemble the chair prior to use. In this regard, one example of a collapsible chair having a rotatable fold-down back is available by referring to U.S. Pat. No. 6,786,553 which issued to James E. Grove on Sep. 7, 2004.